


In Another Life

by LadyVader



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Mid-Credits Scene Compliant, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25861384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyVader/pseuds/LadyVader
Summary: “In another life,” Thor said quietly, standing in the loading bay, wrapped in all the warm clothing they could muster while Loki re-boarded the ship, barefoot and blue, clad only in light conjured silks. “You would have been told by our parents who and what you are, and you’d have been proud to be Jotun, and full of yourself because everyone would have gushed over how beautifully blue you were even before you could walk.”Post-Ragnarok, Thor and Loki stumble into an odd bonding ritual -- comparing their current life to the lives that could have been -- that not only helps to heal old wounds but brings them even closer than before.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 242





	In Another Life

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a cracky note-fic I wrote myself when sleepless one night, so excuse the cracky opening, I swear it has more plot than just my doing away with the purple gitface :P
> 
> Enormous thanks to both my beta theskyandsea and maharlika for each putting up with me flailing about all over this one, thanks m'lovelies!

**In Another Life:**

( _Previously on_ **_Thor: Ragnarok_** _, Thor and Loki were forced to deliberately cause the destruction of Asgard in order to save their people and defeat their evil sister -- Also, Thanos slipped in the shower and fell on a pickaxe that had been handily left by the towel rack by his not so loving daughter Nebula -- We now rejoin Thor and Loki, aboard the ‘Statesman’, contemplating the path that lies before them_.)

Loki pulled a face, trying to look past his reflection in the window. He stood, finally, shoulder to shoulder with Thor, but was feeling decidedly sceptical about his brother’s plan to seek aid from the other Avengers.

“Do you really think it's a good idea to go back to Earth?”

Thor beamed at him, smug despite the still raw-looking hollow where his new black eye patch rested, “Sure! They love me there.”

Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Loki sighed and tried again, keeping his tone carefully level as he said, “Let me rephrase: Do you really think it's a good idea to bring _me_ back to Earth?”

Thor clapped him on the shoulder and smiled at him through the reflection. Loki pretended not to see Thor looking kindly at him. “Probably not. But don't worry, brother... I've got a feeling that everything's going to work out.”

They stood watching the galaxy pass by for a time, until a chunk of large debris (likely Asgardian fragments, for all Loki wished it were otherwise) floated past the Statesman, and Thor’s breath caught, cringing away from the glass as Loki looked on, wincing in sympathy.

Chaos had always come more easily to him, and _still_ it hurt Loki to watch the crumbling remnants of his home tumble through the cosmos. He couldn’t imagine how it must have felt for Thor -- whose heart had always been firmly tied to their homeland and ancient traditions in a way Loki never had -- to be the author of Asgard’s destruction.

He distantly heard himself try to awkwardly comfort Thor, even as he was unable to tear his mind away from the image of his mother’s gardens burning, trotting out the truths that he’d been clinging to himself; that it was _necessary_ , that Hela would have destroyed everything Asgard stood for, that it had been better to lose it, and _her_ , to save their people.

“I know, _but_ …” Thor broke off, visibly gritting his teeth and then burst out (in a startlingly over the top impression of their father), "Oh hello Thor, could you stop playing _Valkyries_ for a moment and listen to your mother and me. We just wanted to let you know that your brother’s adopted; that's fine, we love him too, but just thought you both should know he’s _Jotun_ because it's important to us that you're raised in a loving TRUTHFUL environment… For that matter, you should know we took Loki in because it was the right thing to do, but ALSO because we felt bad about your murderously psychotic sister who we just recently had to imprison and who _you_ may well need to defeat someday. Alright then, off you pop, Daddy needs to put some new murals up disguising how we invaded our way around the realms. See you at dinner."

Loki cackled, and after a second Thor laughed too, settling slowly down into awkward chuckles. Loki, eventually, sighed. “In another life, that’s DEFINITELY how it happened.” For a brief moment, they felt vaguely better.

The moment passed, and they parted, forgetting all about it until a few days later, during a particularly tedious council meeting -- when the remaining council elders were being particularly snobby and obstinate, squabbling with the (mostly) well-intentioned Sakaarians (purely for the sake of naysaying them it seemed) -- Loki leaned over to Thor and said, in sotto voice, “In another life we left them behind for Surtur to deal with,” and Thor spat his drink all over the table laughing, blind to the stares of the elders and Loki couldn't help but bask a little under the weight of their disapproval.

++

Sitting in the back of the large room they’ve been loosely referring to as the _Meeting Hall_ , Thor and Loki watched as Korg charmed his way around the older Asgardian women, children hanging off of him, all shrieking with adulation.

“Y’know,” Loki began in a bored tone that belied how much he enjoyed the Kronan’s chaotic influence on the staid and dusty elders, “In another life, you and I both perished fighting your ridiculous sister--”

“--She’s your sister too. Adopted still counts, Loki.”

“--And now Korg is King of Asgard.”

Thor paused a moment to let the visual sink in before pulling a face at Loki.

“Not Heimdall?”

Loki carefully quelled any hint of a smile lurking in his voice, before answering, “Nope, he cut his losses and eloped with Miek.”

“The Valkyrie then? Or the High Council?”

“Nope. All slaves to his charisma.”

“Well then…” He grinned, and Loki couldn’t help but echo it in turn as Thor concluded, “...All Hail Korg, I guess.”

“ _Indeed_ , brother.”

++

The stale, synthetic surroundings of life aboard a spaceship were a difficult adjustment for all but particularly for the Asgardians, and Loki and Thor hadn’t been able to keep from snapping at each other for days, struggling even to keep it out of council meetings or away from the general populace.

Disproportionately furious with Loki for some only slightly spiteful barb he’d made during dinner, Thor tracked him to a corridor not far from his room. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking oddly small, looking through one of the giant windows breaking up the monotony of the ship's endless corridors. 

Thor was more than ready to start snarling, his temper having been at a low simmer for days at this point when he saw the book in Loki’s lap. 

Some of the refugees had managed to bring some possessions as they fled Asgard, but most of the items carefully being passed between the survivors had come from Loki’s pocket universe; a millennium of purloined books and artefacts coming to light at just the right time. 

Now Loki was sitting there with a thick tome in his lap, the open pages filled with words in a small, delicate script alongside intricate, hand-painted illustrations of flowers, and a dried rose laying between them.

It was their mother’s, the rose and the book itself.

_‘In another life’_ , Thor thought as his temper twisted neatly into a familiar surge of enraged loss, ‘ _this one paltry object isn’t the only thing we have left of our mother.’_

He remembered his mother’s heart then, and her kindness to all living things. He also remembered that the book wasn’t the only thing left of their mother.

“Wherever we end up,” Thor said, softly, sitting down with his knee touching Loki’s, pretending not to see his damp eyes or cheeks, “we’ll make a public garden and fill it with every flower there is.”

Loki’s voice was a creaking, wet thing, entirely unlike his usually assured and silken drawl. “For her.”

Thor couldn’t help but to reach out and carefully press the softest of touches to the paper-dry, fragile petals before pulling away, frightened that he might destroy it by way of his proximity alone. He rested a gentle palm over Loki’s nape instead, satisfied by the feel of his soft, warm _living_ skin rather than that of the dried, dead rose, as he answered, “Yes. For her, but for _us_ , as well, though.”

Loki’s voice cracked before whatever word he had been trying to say could fully emerge, so he nodded stiffly instead, and Thor sat quietly, rubbing circles into Loki’s nape, his anger entirely gone.

++

They stopped the _Statesman_ at an unpopulated, frozen world, sitting in orbit for a week or so as they refilled their water stores with the pure glacial meltwater, and took on board a quantity of wonderfully purple seaweed-esque vegetation. 

Finding the effort to fight his Jotun heritage too draining after extensive trips to the surface, Loki eventually just let himself give in to his instincts. His frost giant side was no longer a secret after the play, and the Asgardians all cooed and sighed to see his red eyes and blue skin, and -- for all he had been the one to write about Odin’s ‘ _Little Blue Baby Icicle_ ’ -- it still discomfited him to find himself so readily accepted in a form he’d come to hate.

“In another life,” Thor said quietly, standing in the loading bay, wrapped in all the warm clothing they could muster while Loki re-boarded the ship, barefoot and blue, clad only in light conjured silks. “You would have been told by our parents who and what you are, and you’d have been proud to be Jotun, and full of yourself because everyone would have gushed over how beautifully blue you were even before you could walk.”

Loki ignored the compliment, blushing. “And you -- being used to getting all the attention as the firstborn, of course -- would have been _so_ jealous of all the fuss I was getting that you most likely would have broken into the art supplies and painted yourself blue trying to upstage me.”

Thor grinned. “I could possibly have got away with too if I’d had the sense to run to Nurse Hilde, but in that life I definitely would have run crying to mother, having tried to put red dye in my eyes to be like you, only to find it stung like a late summer’s wasp!”

Loki nodded, watching as Thor’s eye slowly took in his heritage lines, inexplicably warmed by the admiration he saw there, before quietly adding, “Mother could have used seidr easily enough to charm the paint from your eyes and skin, but the real uproar would have been when they realised your heritage lines would have been drawn on with Father’s indelible enchanted ink used for treaties between the realms.”

Thor laughed all the way back into orbit at just the thought of it all, while Loki bit the inside of his cheek to hide how much he enjoyed it.

++

For all Thor was proud of both Loki and himself for how well they took to being the royal family of a group of refugees -- and for how well they could work together when they put their minds to it -- there are still darker days when they recall all that came before, resenting and missing it all in turn.

Maudlin, and drinking the last of the booze that they managed to hide from the Valkyrie, Thor drawled, “In another life, Hela WASN’T the worst, and we grew up with a big sister who would someday inherit the throne, so you and I got to do as we damn well pleased...”

Loki considered a world where they weren’t in competition with each other -- where all they had to do was be ready to serve as her counsel or generals when her time came for the throne -- and raised his glass. “And she’d have used her powers to make us anything we wanted long before Mother felt we were ready for weapons or magic.”

Thor nodded. “She’d have had Father wrapped around her finger so -- anytime we got in trouble -- we’d have simply run to her to intervene on our behalf.”

Sighing, Loki said, “It might have been nice to have a big sister in that life.”

Feeling strangely grieved, Thor retorted, “But brothers are better in this one, right?”

Loki pulled a mock-considering face and, after Thor tackled him -- using his superior weight and strength to steer Loki into a surprising and quietly desperate hug -- he conceded softly, against Thor’s shoulder, that maybe brothers were actually better, now that he’d had time to think about it.

++ 

One mildly traumatising day -- when Loki was horrified to catch what seemed to be the last Valkyrie giving Heimdall the eye -- he gleefully searched the ship for Thor with the intention of inflicting the revolting news on him in turn. Loki had planned to spin Thor lurid tales of their eventual coupling, only to find himself reluctantly concerned when hours passed with no sign of Thor at all.

Forced to stoop to asking Heimdall for a hint -- who looked at him as though he knew precisely what it was that Loki had planned to tease Thor with -- Loki finally found Thor in the aeroponics bay, sat with the few plants and crops they’d been able to trade for, with his hands sunk into the soil, and looking a little green about the gills.

Frowning, Loki gave in to temptation. “Did Banner’s beast somehow transfer itself to you?” He received only a one-eyed glare and a softly mumbled comment about space sickness in return. It was, overall, so pathetic that Loki couldn’t find it in him to make fun of Thor (fish in a barrel and all that.)

Thor’s powers were likely tied to Asgard in the way that both Hela and Odin’s had been, Loki mused. He’d always been at his best and strongest with earth between his toes and a storm building overhead, and it had been a good long while since the _Statesman_ last made landfall.

“I miss Mjolnir,” Thor rasped in a rare display of weakness, confiding in Loki so openly that any fun in teasing him was moot the moment he spoke. Loki sat down opposite him, pulling a bottle of the Grandmaster’s booze from his pocket ‘verse (the only way to keep it from the Valkyrie) and ignored the wet shine of Thor’s remaining eye.

“I can understand that,” Loki said evenly, taking a healthy swig before passing it to Thor, not entirely sure if it would ease his nausea or make it worse. “But you’ve lived without her before, been weaker _and_ without her for that matter.”

He watched Thor take a shivery swallow and continued in a bland tone, “In another life, I never found out I was Jotun and, instead of completely panicking and trying to kill you before you could find out and hate me--” Thor flinched, but Loki powered on, “--I left you where Father put you, in full sight of your hammer but unable to wield her until such time as he saw fit to end your banishment. And there you’d still live now, mortal but happy, with your equally mortal lady love, and -- aside from the odd pang here and there -- I rather think you’d find that you’d barely miss Mjolnir at all.”

Thor sighed and smacked his lips, his eye watering as colour rushed back into his cheeks at the alcohol's fiery bite. “I think I’ll always miss her. She was a huge part of my life, from aspiring to earn her, to the weight of her at my side--” he flexed his fingers instinctively as he spoke, and even Loki felt a pang, the ringing sound of Mjolnir flying back to Thor’s hand as familiar as the songs of their childhood. “--But,” Thor continued, “I think it’s better for me, in the long run. For all I miss her, I hadn’t realised how much she held me back; the sensation of the storm running through me, not her, is… _glorious_. I don’t know quite how to describe it, brother.”

Loki stole back the bottle and toasted him. “Similar, _perhaps_ , to the very powers of transformation at your fingertips?”

Thor grinned, and Loki hid his own smile in a quick gulp that made his ears ring. He couldn’t help but notice that Thor didn’t mention the other _she_ that he had left behind on Midgard, and -- as they went on to excitedly discuss what they may yet be able to achieve for their people once they reached Earth -- Loki found himself worryingly happy that Thor never brought her up. Not even once.

++

The Valkyrie still won’t tell them her name, for all Thor is convinced Heimdall knows it, he certainly _seemed_ to recognise her. That said, Thor was determined not to allow Loki to trick him into thinking about them together _like that_ , no matter how much worse it was hearing about her life post-Asgard. Her reminiscences about her time ( _millennia_ ) on Sakaar were unsettling at best and downright nauseating at worst.

Loki tutted, rolling his eyes at Thor’s disgust at her most recent tale.

“You don’t understand, Thor. The Grand Master could be really quite genial as long as you were lucky to have his favour.”

The Valkyrie raised her glass, toasting Loki’s words. Thor snorted in derision and scoffed, “Oh yes, he seemed _very_ amenable when he was liquefying his own flesh and blood. I thought you were planning to overthrow him?”

“Well… Yes. But only because it was convenient to do so, even more so once you arrived.”

Thor rolled his eyes. “So glad that my capture was _convenient_ for you, brother.”

Loki grinned. “In another life,” he began, and something in Thor’s stomach twisted because it was the first time they’d played their game in front of people and he found himself both delighted and embarrassed by it, “I DID overthrow the GrandMaster, and I stayed to rule Sakaar. But, instead of breaking you out -- seeing as you’re still not grateful for what I thought was a very generous plan on my part -- I kept you as my Champion, and you got to be your brutish self for the crowds and my daily amusement, and I reaped all the benefits.”

Thor glared as the Valkyrie hooted. “In another life, you stayed and ruled, only to find that _exactly_ the same thing happened as it did in _this_ life -- Bruce and I escaped, freed the Gladiators with Val here, causing the downfall of Sakaar and therefore yours as well. Would you consider _that_ reaping the benefits, brother?”

Quirking a brow, Loki smiled thinly. 

“Fine then, I ruled, but I gave _you_ to the Grand Master as a consolation prize, considering how very _seductive_ he appeared to find you.”

Thor opened his mouth to object when the Valkyrie cackles, jumping in with “Yeah, alright _Lackey_ , but you’d have had to teach him all your tricks, cos no one had the GrandMaster worked up like you did. I kept waiting for him to just drug you like he normally does with his toys, but he seemed to _really_ enjoy the chase with you!”

Thor laughed until he toppled over, and Loki sniffed, haughty as he peered down his nose to where Thor lay rocking on the floor. “The GrandMaster having good taste isn’t _that_ funny, thank you, Thor.” 

Thor pushed himself up onto an elbow.

“I wasn’t laughing at the idea of him desiring you brother, so much as the idea of you running him around in increasingly desperate circles… and, alright, maybe the mental image of you dressed as one of those pleasure slaves he sent to the Hulk’s room to wait on us--” The Valkyrie snorted, “--But, otherwise, I take your abilities to attract the most terrifying maniacs in all the galaxy _very_ seriously indeed, I assure you!”

Loki pulled a face and took a sip of his drink, muttering about how in another life _Thor_ arrived first on Sakaar and that slave outfit would have been what Loki would likely have found _him_ in and pretended not to be delighted when Thor dissolved into easy laughter once again.

++

An accident during a routine repair of the filtration systems cost Loki more blood than the healers are happy with, and Thor had to fight to keep the lightning at bay as they refused over and over to give _his_ to Loki. Loki pointed out, chuckling weakly, that they were not actually related by blood, and therefore Thor’s might do him more harm than good for all they knew, but still the sparks danced over Thor’s tightly clenched knuckles.

Bruce managed to rig up a system that would allow him to test for blood types, and Thor was, thankfully, a compatible donor. With a little shuffling and a lot of frantic urging on Thor’s part, they eventually lay together on a med bay bed that was too small for them both. They lay hooked up to each other via salvaged tubing while Bruce and the healers worked to close the gash in Loki’s thigh, as Thor’s blood pumped into his veins.

“In another life,” Thor said grimly, “It was common knowledge that you were adopted and everyone from the stable hands to the best healers in the land knew you were Jotun, and there would never have been a moments’ doubt in how to treat you, should an accident occur.”

Loki grinned weakly, in his Aesir form still, his seidr strong enough to translate the difference between their races, allowing for the transfusion.

“Well in that case, in that life it was plainly known that I was not _actually_ your brother and so when that misbegotten dance in Vanir occurred, I made _you_ escort me so that I wouldn’t have to take that hideous gold-digging Amora who was only with me to mine me for information on how to attract _you_ better!”

Thor laughed. “Absolutely! It’s a deal, I’ll escort you at Vanaheim, but then you have to attend Fandral’s coming of age on my arm so that his parents can’t seat me next to his awful priggish cousin Hrayr and be forced to listen to her lecture me as though there were not a brain in my head for those Norns forsaken six hours!”

He looked to Loki for a smile -- and hopefully a healthier as well as cheerier expression -- only to find him staring back at him, tired but clearly thoughtful.

“Things would have been really quite different if we’d been brought up with me merely as a ward of the crown or simply just openly acknowledged as their adopted son. Father told me something once, but I was too angry to hear him really, but it makes me wonder now…”

“Makes you wonder what? It couldn’t have been _so_ different; you’d have always been my brother, no matter what.”

“Oh, I’d have always been _like_ a brother to you, Thor, don’t think for a moment that I’d have been spared your heavy-handed adoration, I’m not that lucky even in another life. But there certainly would have been differences -- just think about it, if we’re acceptable escorts for each other then it follows that there are some changes to allow for our being _not_ related.”

Thor rolled onto his side, careful not to disturb the tubes, hitching himself up onto an elbow so that he could frown down at Loki lying next to him.

“I think you’re still light-headed. Aside from hitting you up to freeze things for me for fun in the summertime, I can’t think of what difference it might make?”

“So, you readily admit that you’d pester me for my ice magic if it suited you?” 

Thor nodded and Loki’s lips curled, a glimmer in his eyes twisting his expression into something oddly suggestive.

“And you don’t think that -- with that nice, secret, _easily_ accessible corridor between our rooms -- that, once puberty set in, you wouldn’t have been creeping through to my rooms to beg me to use my shapeshifting skills to create saucy doubles of whosoever caught your fancy each month?”

Thor’s face flushed a far darker pink than it seemed possible, considering how much blood he was currently sharing with Loki. He stammered, “I, I wouldn’t have taken advantage of your powers like that, or _you,_ I mean…”

Loki continued blithely on, “You don’t think, given how close we’ve always been, that mother, knowing how frankly possessive I’ve always been --”

“--you never did like to share.”

“-- would be happy leaving us rife with seething hormones _and_ secret access to each other’s beds, should the notion to… _experiment_ cross our minds?”

Thor blinked so rapidly that Loki fancied he could feel the breeze of it on his face and was about to mock him for being so easily flustered when Thor finally answered him.

“I wouldn’t, I mean, I wouldn’t have taken advantage of your powers like that. I mean, for fun, certainly, but if the other me _had_ snuck through to you in the night, it wouldn’t have been to make you pretend to be someone else. No matter what life we were living, I wouldn’t have done that, not to either of us.”

Loki couldn't help but laugh, smiling widely. “I didn’t say I’d _let you_ do anything with whoever I turned into, but it’s good to know you’d have at least snuck through to me for the sake of seducing _me_ , not me pretending to be our day maid.”

Thor all but choked on his own saliva, “Dorthe? Gods no, she used to spit on her tissue and wipe under my eyes checking for ‘sleepy dust’ in the mornings,” He broke off to shudder, “I’d take you in _any_ life over _Dorthe_ , then and now!”

“High praise indeed,” Loki hummed, the pain meds finally kicking all the way in, enjoying Thor’s blush as his brain caught up to what he’d just said. “Perhaps Father could have achieved his goals in that life then, marrying us to each other for the good of the realms.”

“Maybe so,” He heard Thor say as he started drifting off, exhausted and doped up and unable to stop himself from snuggling into Thor’s warmth, imagining them in his bed in his old rooms and entirely comforted by the thought.

++

It took several months of long days out in the black, but finally they had been able to get the _Statesman_ ’s various rooms allocated into personal quarters, storage, aeroponics, dining and social areas, and both Thor and Loki had turned over their larger quarters (intended for the GrandMaster) in favour of keeping the remaining family groups together.

There were quarters enough to room all the refugees, leaving the crew quarters close to the ships main bridge free and ideally located for the new owners. Heimdall, Valkyrie and Bruce took the smallest of the rooms intended for the crew, leaving Thor and Loki with the only slightly larger rooms -- meant for the captain and first mate -- complete with its shared bathroom and adjoining door.

It was... _nice_ ; hearing Thor moving around his rooms again, feeling him close and knowing that he trusted Loki enough to not only accept the door between their space but to also welcome it. Loki found he couldn’t help but feel something of that other imagined life simmering just under his skin.

Too skittish to stay alone in his rooms without the comfort of Thor’s noisy presence nearby, Loki found himself prowling out into the main halls. He came across Thor standing at the large window near their rooms, just looking out into the galaxy whirling by. 

Loki came to stand elbow to elbow with Thor -- _on his good side, he’s considerate like that these days_ \-- gazing out into the stars with him, silent for as long as he could bear it.

“You headed back to your room?” Loki asked, oddly breathless -- _eager_ almost -- for the answer, wetting his lips when Thor nodded.

“In another life, you know there’s already been quite some talk about that adjoining door? It’s like our secret passageway all over again.”

It seemed he'd gone too far -- drawing the idle longings of that life into this one -- when Thor dropped his eyes and was quiet for a long time, so long that Loki had begun to wonder if it was too late to run after all. Then Thor answered him, his voice soft and serious. 

“In another life, they'd have never let us have those rooms. Here or in Asgard. They’d have kept us separated for our studies and training and given us rooms on opposite sides of the palace, because if they had told us growing up that we would someday belong to each other, I'd never have had eyes for anyone else. I'd have used Mjolnir to fly me to your balcony each night and sneak into your room just to watch you sleep.”

It was a long speech in a low voice that Loki wasn’t sure he’d ever heard from Thor before, and it made something bubble and churn just under the surface of his skin, and Loki found that he had to swallow twice before he could croak, “ _Just_ to watch me sleep?”

Thor shook his head, his eye still on the stars blurring by.

“Probably not. I don't think I'd have held back easily, not if I knew I was welcome.”

Something between a gasp and a laugh burst out of Loki.

“I think you’d find you’d have been _so_ welcome that it would have been a waste of their time trying to keep us apart, because in _that_ life there would have been only an illusion in my bed to trick whoever's job it was to mind me. The _real_ me would have already been in your rooms... _under you_.”

A strained, awkward silence hung over them for a moment, only their heavy breathing and the distant hum of the engines breaking the tension, and then Thor murmured, “Sounds… _nice_ , this other life.”

Loki shrugged, acutely aware of the fact that he’d chosen to wear his tightest leathers that day, unsure as yet if that was a good plan or not. 

“Maybe…” Loki said offhandedly, as Thor shifted next to him, his eye on Loki now as he wet his lips and pretended to be looking out of the window instead of concentrating on the heat of his brother still standing at his side, no matter what. “Perhaps we'd have rebelled against being forced to wed, or simply grown apart over time...? We'll never know for certain.”

A beat, and then Loki continued, “That's the thing though, about new beginnings... you get to try for the life you _want_ to lead, rather than the one you were granted.”

He didn’t think he’d imagined the weight of Thor’s hands settling at his waist, but somewhere along the way Loki had actually fixed his gaze on the worlds passing by outside the window, rather than face Thor’s possible rejection head-on, so he was still surprised when Thor pressed his lips to the soft patch of skin just below Loki’s ear and muttered, “Are you saying it’s not too late for me to join the Valkyries, after all, brother?”

Loki rolled his eyes, irritated by how confident Thor must have felt to be able to tease him, even as his skin fizzed with delight where Thor’s lips settled against it.

“I'm saying--” Loki started, intent on discomfiting Thor to equal the playing field somewhat, and still shaking all the same, “--if you _don't_ take me back to your rooms right now and fuck me till I forget the idea of _any_ life but this one -- _here_ with _you_ \-- then you don't _deserve_ a new beginning in the first place, and I'm taking over as King again because you’re clearly too stupid to rule after all.”

Loki turned and found himself already caged between Thor’s arms, nowhere close to resenting it or Thor’s brilliant smile as he tutted at him, shoving his delight under a familiar layer of snippy disdain that Thor had been able to see through for centuries already.

Thor seized him for a quick, dirty kiss before Loki could think of anything scorching or chiding enough to say that would let him retake control for a moment. So he laughed quietly instead and let Thor learn the shape of his teeth with the tip of his tongue, swaying in his arms until the need to be horizontal became too much.

Ducking quickly out of Thor’s hold, and chuckling breathlessly at Thor’s lust reddened cheeks, straining clothes and glazed eye ( _all_ for him, all for _him_ ) Loki took several short steps backwards, towards their rooms.

“Now move your arse, brother. I've centuries of orgasms to catch up on, and a hunch those sparkles that you now leak from your fingertips are going to prove to be _very_ worth my while, and I have no intention of waiting for another life to find out...”

Smiling wickedly, Loki bolted away towards Thor’s rooms. And Thor found that he was only too happy to take the hint from those other lives, and just _fucking get on_ with living his, happily, with Loki. ( _Under Him_.)

**Fin.**


End file.
